


If Only You’d Asked Me

by vega_voices



Series: Sleeps with Butterflies [41]
Category: CSI, CSI: Crime Scene Investigation
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-15
Updated: 2013-02-15
Packaged: 2017-11-29 10:05:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,302
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/685731
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vega_voices/pseuds/vega_voices
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Maybe what they had was a moment in time and they’ve passed along each other, but instead of ships in the night, it’s the Titanic and the ice berg and her heart was left sinking into icy waters.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	If Only You’d Asked Me

**Title:** If Only You’d Asked Me  
 **Series:** [Sleeps with Butterflies](http://vega-voices.livejournal.com/tag/sleeps%20with%20butterflies)  
 **Author:** vegawriters  
 **Fandom:** CSI  
 **Pairing:** Grissom/Sara  
 **Rating:** Teen  
 **A/N:** This is inspired by what’s come out over the last couple of days. Most notably Shane Saunders tweets and this article blurb: <http://jorjafox.net/2013/gsr-faces-the-music/>. Is based on the shot of Sara sitting alone in the restaurant. The title comes from Amanda Palmer's _The Bed Song_ , which is highlighted below.  
 **Disclaimer:** CSI was and is one of the best written shows on TV. It kills me that ratings are down and people aren’t seeing what wonderful creations are coming out of the stories being told. This season especially has inspired me to write. What’s wrong in that? I also make no money off of what I write. I do hope that someday, however, I can tell the writers what they’ve meant to me. Money-wise, CSI belongs to CBS and the powers that be. The characters belong to us, the fans.

 **Summary:** _Maybe what they had was a moment in time and they’ve passed along each other, but instead of ships in the night, it’s the Titanic and the ice berg and her heart was left sinking into icy waters._

**And I lay there wondering, what is the matter?  
** Is this a matter of worse or of better?  
You took the blanket, so I took the bedsheet  
But I would have held you if you'd only __  
\- Amanda Palmer, _The Bed Song_

The worst part was that they loved each other.

There were moments when she’s sure it was all a huge mistake. She’s had the fears since the beginning, and has always covered up them up with a smile and a smirk. After all, it took her spurring him on. It took her finding her voice. And there is a logical part of her that knows he is an insecure man wrapped in a cloak of fear, but she’s reaching a point where even her love for him can’t forgive that. Maybe what they had was a moment in time and they’ve passed along each other, but instead of ships in the night, it’s the Titanic and the ice berg and her heart was left sinking into icy waters.

Just thinking about him made her toes curl and her lips curve into a light smile. Even hearing his voice on a day she knew talking to him meant starting a whole new path in their relationship, she’d had just a moment where his voice washed over her and the slightest of smiles touched her lips. A moment when her heart had jumped not from nerves but because he loved her too because they’d stood on a beach together and made a vow to love each other through the good times and the bad. And that was the damned problem. Loving each other was the easy part. It’s the making themselves work that isn’t. And she doesn’t know where it all went wrong.

Or does she?

They’d been hiking across a desert in the Southwest, talking about kids and a future and she’d realized he was still going back to whatever life he had overseas and she was here, handling the business side of their relationship. They’d stood in their kitchen, arguing over finances while he made dinner; they couldn’t afford her extra trip to Peru. She’d listened when he called on their anniversary and he sounded so distant and he blamed the connection and being tired but what if it was something else? When had they started choosing sex over conversation? Silence over communication? One thing lead to another, snowballing, until she sat alone at a restaurant, twisting the thin gold band into a grove on her ring finger, staring around the room at couples who made the effort to be together. They made the effort. When had that stopped for them? When had they stopped carving out time to at least answer the phone, even if she was at a scene or he was in the middle of a lecture?

She was too young to sleep alone every night. She didn’t need Gil next to her every moment of every day, but she was a single woman with a wedding band on her finger and with every breath the reality of their situation grew heavier and heavier and heavier until her ribs threatened to crack under the pressure of the pain in her chest. She couldn’t cry any more tears, yet her eyes kept making them. What was worse? Feeling the physical blow from a man who only claimed to love her or only hearing distant I love yous from one who did?

Had she ever really broken her cycle of abuse?

Or was this just what happened to two people when they married? She’d never thought marriage would happen for her and when she’d said _I Do_ to the man of her dreams, she realized now she’d never thought ahead to future plans. They were ready for the day they died, but what about the in between? What about moments like this when they could have been sitting next to each other but still so far away?

For the first time the other night, she’d researched what it would mean to file separation papers. She’d bought them tickets to Spring Training in March and then sat there, staring a computer screen that walked her through the process of legal separation since they’d been married in Costa Rica and not Nevada. She’d never hit print, and she hadn’t looked at it again, but the window was still open on her laptop. What would it take to push them over the edge, and even if they sailed over the cliff, would they somehow be able to hold it together and reconcile? Maybe this was what they needed? Break up or fix up?

She didn’t want to walk away.

She wanted him. Him with his bugs and his books and the way his big hands held her when they made love. She wanted his passion for the puzzle and the insights into the world only he ever made. She wanted Shakespeare in the morning and Neruda at night and in between she wanted more than knowing she wasn’t alone in the world.

But sitting alone at a table in a restaurant, unsure of the next step, her heart and her head battled not with each other but with reality. It wasn’t just on him. She’d encouraged him to follow his passions and he encouraged her to follow hers and as a result they just didn’t see each other. They just weren’t together. Because passions for them were about more than the other person. He told her once he hadn’t cared about beauty until he met her and she’d believed him. But now that he did care about beauty, things other than her turned his head. He’d never cheat, but instead he found his fulfillment in the excitement of the excavation.

And the wine in her glass didn’t taste any more or less bitter without him next to her and the food didn’t lose its flavor and the world spun on without them in each other’s lives, but every last poem on heartbreak was right. The world around her was gray and dull and even the noise of the restaurant seemed far away. Her heart would keep beating and she’d find passion in her life again, but the wedding band on her finger meant something to her.

She could handle a failed relationship. But Marriage meant more to her than combined checking accounts and medical powers of attorney. At least it had at one time. Now she wasn’t sure. So she sat alone in a restaurant full of people, twisting a ring on her finger, waiting for decisions that just wouldn’t come.


End file.
